Installing Jane's F-15, FA-18, IAF and USAF on modern systems

[kawattemono]

This is a summary of the steps I had to do that I didn't find anywhere else.

 

1. Installation: some titles won't open the setup program on my Windows Vista/7 64-bit OS, so I had to use VirtualBox with a Windows XP 32-bit system. After installing on the virtual machine (XP), I copied the folder (like "C:\Janes\F15") to the real machine (Vista/7). One can use virtual folders for that, which makes a host directory accessible to the guest. Remember to install patches on the guest before copying.

 

But the copied installation contents won't work out of the box because the game won't search for resources (sound, terrain, planes, etc) in the current directory. You can either place them in the same folder as installed on the guest, or a custom one and do the following steps.

 

F15 and FA-18 use the registry to store the paths. I've attached an example REG file (I had to add a ".txt" suffix to attach it, but it has to be removed), which can be used after editing it with Notepad or a similar text editor to replace "C:\\Janes\\F15\\" and "C:\\Program Files\\Jane's Combat Simulations\\FA-18\\" for your own paths. Then open the modified REG file and choose "Yes".

Note that if you installed it on the virtual machine, the registry information won't be there so it has to be imported anyays (in case of F15 and FA-18).

 

IAF and USAF use INI config files under the installation directory to store paths (yes, it could just try to find them in the executable's folder, but doesn't). For IAF, the file is "tgen.ini" and for USAF "ctm_db.ini", "tgen.ini" and "sim.ibx".

Note that if you installed it on the virtual machine, as long as you put it under the same path on the real machine it will work without changes to these files.

 

2. Fixes: FA-18 is the only one that woked without changes. IAF and USAF required Jane's Tackleberry's Patches.

And F15 required ddwrapper with ForceDirectDrawEmulation=1 in "aqrit.cfg", in addition to renaming or removing the "Movies" folder. dxwnd worked with the movies and everything, but some menus (other than the main one) didn't display properly.

 

I hope this helps to fill some of the missing information on the topic.

janes_fa18_keys.reg.txt

[Rod_ferrada]

Sorry to reply after a decade, but this actually made sense, but now:

 

m,mmmm....and how you managed to run it before, cause, you see, i managed to run the setup.exe, in my win 11 machibe, it was blocked by another process and with a trick in the task manager i shutted down said process and the setup opens, but at 99% loading, an error message pops, "F/A 18 is incompatible with windows NT4", i installed it on win xp on virtual box, but it turned out to be useless because in this particular game moving the directory to another computer is a no go, i copied de registry, installed in a similar path than in virtualbox on the real machine, but no, keeps giving errors of not finding dat files....i cant even try this method because of the setup not running, any idea??  thanks.

in compatibility mode it doesnt even opens....i managed to run IAF, USAF, and F-15, but F-18 is a nightmare

[DarkenedRoom]

This is a wait chain issue which is known to affect InstallShield. Run setup.exe and open task manager and expand the setup process. There may be 3 sub processes, go to details for each one and analyze wait chains. Some will be empty (no issue) but one may have a completely unrelated process hanging onto a resource needed by the FA-18 setup, (for me it was EpicGameLauncher). Kill this process and setup should continue although it is slow and takes a while so be patient.

This article was for a different game setup that was hanging due to some Logitech software, but is useful background:

https://www.tales-from-darkenedroom.com/post/installshield-freezing-it-may-be-a-logitech-issue

[DarkenedRoom]

Some guides for installing Jane's F-15 on Win10 also confirmed to work on Win11:
https://www.tales-from-darkenedroom.com/my-blog/tags/jane-s-combat-simulations-f-15

And another one for installing Jane's F-18 on Win10:
https://www.tales-from-darkenedroom.com/post/jane-s-f-a-18-catching-the-windows-10-wire

Would be useful if anyone can confirm whether or not it works on Win11 as well?

[undaunted_aviator]

I tested Jane's F-15 on Win11 with ddrawcompat 0.70 and nglide and it worked. However since I have figured out how to run it with dxwnd I moved to my Win7 machine for playing JF-15. I have no confidence playing retro games in Windows 11. Last year an Windows update broke a retro game which before worked (SWAT 3) and another update broke an fairly recent Prepar3D addon from 2023. 

 

btw thanks a lot for your guides, your blog is a real gold mine!

Edited Thursday at 10:33 PM by undaunted_aviator

[DarkenedRoom]

This is a guide for running Jane's IAF under Win10:

https://www.tales-from-darkenedroom.com/post/jane-s-iaf-instructions-avoiding-failure